1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a multi-purpose cigarette lighter and, more particularly, to a portable cigarette lighter which has a coiled wire heated by rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery cells located in the body of the lighter and which is further provided with a built-in vacuum cleaner operated by said cells to work as a table cleaner, and/or with an emergency electric lamp.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The known battery-operated cigarette lighter using an electrically heated wire are of the type that ignites an inflammable gas or which utilizes a very powerful source of electricity such as a car cigarette lighter. Except for these special types, common battery-operated cigarette lighters using an electrically heated wire have been considered to be very uneconomical, because of the short life of the battery, rapidly discharged by the frequent use as well as by the relatively long time required for properly lighting of a cigarette. Furthermore, it has been considered heretofore to be very impracticable to produce a table cigarette lighter using batteries, because of the small size required and therefore of the limitation on the number of small batteries. Recently, however, the nickel-cadmium dry battery cell, for instance General Electric Company's Ni-Cd dry cell "2/3 AA", has been developed, which is small in size, has low internal resistance, affords a large discharge current (current outputs of as much as several amperes), presents small voltage drops in the initial discharge period, and can be rapidly re-charged in a manner of minutes. This makes it possible and practicable to produce a table-model or portable battery-operated multi-purpose cigarette lighter.
Because of the availability of such dry battery cells, it has now become possible to make not only a simple cigarette lighter, but also to incorporate therewith a vacuum cleaner and/or an emergency electric lamp.